Missing and Present
by jaybee65
Summary: Ros bears burdens for colleagues both missing and present. But maybe she's not the only one. Ros/Lucas. Written for Yuletide fic exchange; spoilers for all of Series 7.


Title: Missing and Present

Characters/Pairing: Ros/Lucas

Spoilers: Set in the immediate aftermath of 708, so contains spoilers through the end of Series 7

Summary: Ros bears burdens for colleagues both missing and present. But maybe she's not the only one.

Written for PetiteEtoile22 for Yuletide '08. She asked for Ros/Lucas hurt-comfort. I'm not sure if I quite managed the hurt-comfort, but I aimed for a similar kind of mood.

*****

It's not quite panic that seizes Ros when she learns that Harry is missing. Panic is a species of emotion, and Ros can't seem to summon up any feeling whatsoever. Rather, she's gripped by an absence of feeling, a lack of reaction, a kind of numb stupor that shuts down all attempts at cognitive function. Her mind spins uselessly but ever more rapidly, orbiting in irresistibly descending spirals around a fact that she refuses to acknowledge or believe.

What she's heard cannot possibly be. And so the earth stops turning, her heart stops beating, and time itself halts in an agonising moment of denial that she strains to prolong for eternity.

Then the universe jerks free from her control, the magnetic poles shift, and everything begins to move again. Harry's missing, and they must find him: it's brutal, unavoidable truth. Ros looks over at Lucas. His expression is grim, his thin face pale. Moments ago, they were celebrating yet another near escape in the never-ending series of near escapes they've come to call their lives; now, they stand in dejected silence, covered in grime, blood, dust, and pulverised traces of human remains.

"You need to have your wound seen to," she says. She's matter-of-fact, because anything else would be beneath them.

"Right," he answers, just as matter-of-fact, and then he looks away.

They don't speak again until they reach Thames House.

***

Ros reports what little she knows to the Home Secretary, filling in details from Malcolm's debrief. The Home Secretary is concerned and supportive, or so he says in that self-consciously statesman-like manner of his, and he offers to do anything -- anything at all -- he possibly can to help. She knows he won't, in the end: a politician's promise, however sincere, always crumbles beneath the weight of expediency. But for the sake of preserving his illusions about his own integrity, she stands and thanks him in crisp, professional tones as she leaves. The door closes behind her, solid and dismissive.

She tries to call in favours at Vauxhall Cross, but that's a futile effort. There, she's tainted, forever Collingwood's girl and thus a source of institutional shame. Many of her former colleagues won't speak with her at all. A few others drop not-so-subtle hints that Harry wouldn't be in such straits had he refrained from encroaching upon their jurisdiction in the first place. They send her on her way, rebuffed and empty-handed.

Back at Section D, Dolby lingers distractingly by desks, hovers over shoulders like a sallow-faced sentinel, and engages in an elaborate pretence of supervision -- but he can't bring himself to look Ros in the eye. Whenever there's anything concrete to do, he cedes operational control to her, retreating to Harry's office to thumb through papers and talk in muffled whispers to the JIC on the telephone.

Everyone else seems to look to her for reassurance -- even Malcolm, who's been on the Grid since the dawn of time. The hopeful pleading in their eyes nearly makes her knees buckle, but she straightens her shoulders, lifts up her chin, and projects a confidence that she doesn't actually feel. It doesn't matter if she wants to scream, cry, or curl up in a foetal position in a corner; she's their leader and she must set an example.

Suddenly, she knows what it must feel like for Harry, day after day after day: surrounded by colleagues, but utterly alone.

***

That night in bed, she lies motionless, eyes wide open in the dark because closing them doesn't bring on any increased desire for sleep. Eventually, she switches on the lamp and opens a novel. When she finds herself mindlessly reading the same paragraph four times in a row, she sets down the book, throws off the duvet, and gets up.

By the time she showers, dresses, and hails a taxi, it's three in the morning. The security screeners at the entrance of Thames House rouse themselves from their lethargy to let her pass.

"The early bird catches the worm, eh?" ventures the chattier of the two. She silences him with a stare.

The Grid itself is hushed and dim, lit only by a handful of computer monitors that cast a blueish hue throughout the room. She has it all to herself for a few hours, or so she assumes, until she spots a lean figure slouched in a chair.

"Lucas," she says.

"Ros." He tilts his head towards the far side of the room. "There's fresh coffee."

"Thank you." She approaches his desk and glances down at his screen. "Find anything interesting?"

"Not yet."

She leans in and takes a closer look. He's reading raw transcripts of FSB communications intercepted overnight by GCHQ.

"They won't mention him," she says. "They know we're listening."

"I know," he replies. "Still, it might be useful to see who's talking to whom."

She nods in acknowledgement. Spotting a familiar name in the transcript, she murmurs, "Vasiliev. Look there, it says he's been called in to Moscow. That may be something."

Lucas does a half-turn in his chair and cranes his neck to look up at her. "Your Russian's quite good." His tone is approving and more than a bit surprised.

She smiles. "I learnt to speak some as a child. I lived there for a few years."

"Really? What were you doing in Russia?"

"My father was the British Ambassador, you know." She waits for the inevitable, "Oh, that's right," but when it doesn't come, she realises from his curious expression that no, he doesn't know.

She'd assumed that he would know -- that he'd looked up her file, that he'd gossipped with Jo or Ben, or that somehow he'd simply _known_, just by looking at her, because she carries responsibility for her past crimes around like a shield to ward off anyone foolish enough to get too close. It hadn't occurred to her until now that perhaps he'd had too many of his own ghosts to contend with over the past few months to bother looking for hers.

It's an odd relief to be talking to someone who doesn't know her whole sordid life story. He doesn't know about the coup attempt; he doesn't know that her father is in prison; he doesn't know that she betrayed Harry and had to die and be reborn as penance. He doesn't know any of that. For him, she's just a new colleague. A blank slate.

A fresh start.

***

They find themselves in the conference room where Adam once hurled a chair in rage over her betrayal. It's something akin to rage that she unleashes now, lashing out at Lucas the way she destroyed her hotel room -- except better and more satisfying, because Lucas fights back, matching her blow for blow, bite for bite, scratch for scratch.

The table is cold and hard and unforgiving against her bare spine; Lucas is all bones and sharp edges and taut, inky skin. She rakes her nails deep along his back and hopes she leaves her own, permanent marks; he yanks her hands away and pins them painfully above her head. She curses, maybe in English, maybe in Russian, maybe in garbled incoherence -- she's not even sure whose voice it is that cries out, hers or his.

He's not Adam; he never will be, and maybe that's the point. He has no expectations for her to disappoint; he can't judge her because he has no knowledge of her past self to compare her to. At the same time, he can't offer forgiveness, redemption, or inner peace. But he's here, and he's now, and he wants her -- and that's more than enough for the moment.

Adam was danger, impossible choices, and the helpless inability to say no even though they both knew better. She could say no to Lucas if she chose. But there's something about him that draws her to him: he's loss and involuntary exile; he's bitterness swallowed, turned inward, and finally overcome; he's rebirth, homecoming, and a rediscovered sense of purpose. He's not so different from Ros, in fact. And what they both are, what they've become, at last, is Section D.

She's made her choices, and in the end, they were the right ones. She suspects his were, too.

***

Afterwards, they gather their rumpled clothes from the floor. They don't apologise, or offer awkward excuses, or make promises that neither of them could possibly keep. Instead, they simply get dressed and return to work.

She settles down at a workstation. He hands her a mug of coffee before he sits down in a nearby chair. He sips his own drink, cupping his hands around the sides.

"Eight years may have felt like forever, but it isn't really all that long a time to be gone," he says. "And yet the only people left from those days are Malcolm and Harry." In the subdued light, she thinks she sees a trace of wistfulness cross his face. "Sometimes I feel like I've awakened from a coma and found my whole life already gone by. There's a history here, and I'm not part of it anymore."

"I could try to fill you in," she offers.

"Did you know Tom? Tessa?"

"No. Malcolm mentions Tom now and then. I've never heard of Tessa."

"Brilliant woman. Quite the political operator. I thought she'd be here forever."

"There are several people I could say that about."

He sets down his mug, and his gaze sharpens. "Maybe we'll be gone in a few years, too."

She holds his stare, unblinking. He's right, of course, but it's defeatist to think that way, and she refuses to allow him, or her, or _anyone_ to give in to that sort of pessimism. "There's a difference between us and the rest of them," she says, insistent. "We all left -- but the two of us came back. It sets us apart. It means we're meant to be here."

For the first time she can recall since she met him, he laughs. A real laugh, with the corners of his eyes wrinkling in mirth. "So we're fated, then? Or is it doomed?"

She shrugs. "Is there a difference?"

He doesn't answer. Smiling, he picks up his coffee and walks away.

She turns her attention to the computer and opens a file. They'll find Harry. She's certain now. He may be gone, but he'll be back, too, just like Ros and Lucas -- because like them, he's meant to be in Section D. He is Section D, more than any of them.

When the others begin to straggle in to begin the morning shift, sleep still creasing their faces, she's able to greet them with a smile. This time, her confidence is genuine, not merely forced out of a sense of duty.

Suddenly, she knows what it must feel like for Harry, day after day after day: surrounded by colleagues, and thus never alone.


End file.
